Pink Slip Oct. ’13: Lohan, Sterling, Cruz – You’re Fired!

TED CRUZ

Did Rafael Edward Cruz really graduate cum laude from Princeton? Yikes, this tiger doesn’t seem to have much left in the tank, judging by his embarrassing filibuster that had him reading aloud from Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor. And he even voted for the bill he claimed he wanted to block! But give this slick guy with the wicked grin some credit: Texas’ junior Republican senator could be the most dangerous American in politics today, thanks to his unabashed bid to be the Tea Party’s No. 1 flag-bearer in 2016, while he runs roughshod over our Republicans and screws over the majority of the American people with his fanatical conservative views fueled by deep pockets of the right-wing plutocrats—all the while waving a copy of the Constitution like a hankie. One Sen. Joe McCarthy was enough—we don’t need two. Be gone, you arrogant phony.

SAMANTHA LETHWAITE

In terrorism circles this sociopathic British mum is known as the White Widow. She’s been on the run since 2005 when her husband Germaine Lindsay blew himself up in the suicide bombings of the London subway system that left 26 people dead. Recently, Al Shabab, the Somali cell under the evil influence of Al Qaida according to intelligence sources, praised her on their web site. Now new reports say that this twisted human being was at the center of the devastating attack on the Nairobi mall in Kenya, reportedly directing the cold-blooded killing of mothers and children as they begged for mercy in the aisles and behind the counters. Lethwaite and her cohort perpetrated an act of desperation and cowardice that will never win converts to their cause. But that’s not why she kills, is it? She can run, but she can’t hide forever.

JOHN STERLING

What can we say about the Yankees egregious radio announcer that hasn’t been said before—if not from his own mouth but from others’? His bombastic home-run calls, his tedious tangents that distract from the actual action on the field, and his terrible game-ending coda that is a parody of ridiculous rhetoric, with his long-winded emphasis on the wrong word. Oh, there’s also the “A-Bomb from A-Rod,” the “Melky Way,” ad nauseam. It doesn’t help that his sidekick, Suzyn Waldman, is about as interesting as the hoagie she usually seems to be stuffing into her yawning yap. But the last word has to be his blown call on a Rodriguez fly-ball to right field during a Toronto Blue Jays game. It makes you wonder if he was on hallucinogens that day as he first went into his “it is high—it is far—it is gone” chant. Then he back-tracked to say that the ball had “kicked over” the fence. Finally, probably because the spectators in the stadium were providing a different radio soundtrack that didn’t quite jibe with a Yankee hitting a homer in their hometown, Sterling had to admit, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I got that all wrong! I got that all wrong! At the wall Davis made the catch.” OK, so he apologized, but that’s just part of his legacy of lameness. And now Yankees fans stuck listening to him on the radio are supposed to be happy that Sterling is moving his shlock act to WFAN? No way! He should be outta there.

EDWARD TELMANY

We don’t really want to single out Edward Telmany, US Coachways chief executive, but it’s guys like him who’ve really taken people for a ride online. This charter bus service based in Staten Island had earned a rather lousy reputation on Yelp and other websites, getting more than a dozen “one star” reviews for reportedly handling its passengers like baggage. But did Telmany want to improve service? Of course not! Like too many corporate execs these days, he no doubt wanted to shoot the messenger, but he couldn’t really do that, at least not legally (so far), so he did the next best thing thanks to the Internet: hiring freelance writers, ordering his staff, and even pitching in himself to spin those wheels in a different direction. According to The New York Times, he posted a five-star review that began, “US Coachways does a great job!” Well, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman wasn’t on board with that. In fact, his office cracked down on a bus-load of online prevaricators. Telmany’s company ultimately had to pay $75,000 in fines and agree not to stop the deceptions that the Attorney General said were “worse than old-fashioned false advertising.” We think bosses like him should be given a one-way ticket to Palookaville!

DINA LOHAN & ASHLEY HORN

They’re not related by blood—at least as far as we know—but these two unfortunate women do have something in common: Lindsay Lohan. Dina is the misfit mom who’s battling a DWI count after being busted for allegedly driving 77 mph on the Northern State—and she is also facing a foreclosure on her $1.3 million home in Merrick as we reported first in The Long Island Press. Ashley Horn is Lindsay’s estranged half-sister (she’s the love child of Lindsay’s daffy dad Michael) and her claim to fame is that she recently spent $25,000 on plastic surgery to “look like Lindsay in her good days.” For good measure Horn, now 18, made clear to In Touch Weekly that she meant when Lindsay was “around 18, 19 years old.” All we know is that there are some pretty weird genes running around in this loony Lohan circle and we wish it would stop once and for all. Get thee to a nunnery.

SHELDON SILVER

Shelly, Shelly, Shelly! You’re making us all meshuggina with your crazy antics. There’s your stonewalling the governor’s ethics commission, your stubborn refusal to reveal your “clients” from whom your personal injury law firm somehow garners some $350,000 annually and your outrageous cover-up of Assemb. Vito Lopez, the disgraced Brooklyn Democrat who couldn’t stop pawing his women assistants. Add to this list of shame the recent discovery of $400,000 stashed in the Lower East Side closet of William Rapfogel, ex-head of the Metroplitan Council on Jewish Poverty, who happens to be married to your chief of staff, Judy Rapfogel, who “knew nothing” about how all that cash got into their co-op. New York could always benefit from some good, clean liberal politics, but not the kind that comes with this tarnished Silver lining.

ANN COULTER

Okay, so you can always count on the blazing blonde bomb-thrower Ann Coulter to lob some lethal verbal barrage at her political enemies when she’s launching publicity for another one of her horribly misleading right-wing screeds that conservatives lap up like pigs to a trough. But apparently she went a little too far on Fox News for host Sean Hannity—no paragon of selfless virtue either—when she kept using Obama and “monkey” in the same sentence, as in: Russian President Vladimir Putin is “making a monkey out of Obama.” Without her goldie-locks, she’s just another ugly racist out to make a buck exploiting her audience’s prejudices. We blame lefty Bill Maher for making her a right-wing star—and he was just treating her like a joke. Well, this gag has gone on long enough. Throw her books into the remainder bin. She gives reading a bad name.

PAUL RYAN

The chairman of the House Budget committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, makes us long for the Grand Old Party of moderate Republicans. They were fiscal conservatives, of course, but they would compromise for the greater good when it was reasonable. They would never, ever, seek political gain at the expense of the powerless and the defenseless. Well, those poor folks will have to take it on the chin (and in their gut) as long as radicals like Ryan have power. He recently explained that cutting food stamps for millions of unemployed Americans was actually doing them a favor because the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) had become “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” All that on about $4.45 a day per person. And two-thirds of SNAP’s beneficiaries are children, the elderly and the disabled. Way to shred that safety net, Mr. Vice President Wannabe!

DAN DAKICH

Indiana sports radio host Dan Dakich may know Hoosier basketball inside and out but when he tweeted recently against NCAA football players who dared to show solidarity by wearing the letters “APU”—for “all players united”—on their wristbands and uniforms, he stepped out of bounds. Every honest fan of collegiate sports knows full well that the NCAA is the last vestige of indentured servitude we have in America. All too often these young athletes are chewed up and churned out without learning a lick while earning millions and millions of dollars in TV revenue for their respective schools. The goals of the protest are simple, as The Times reported: to show support for students who joined concussion lawsuits against the NCAA and to stand by players “harmed by NCAA” rules, to show unity for those seeking reform, and to direct a portion of the $1 billion in new TV contracts to guarantee “basic protections” for the college players, in particular “guaranteed scholarship renewals for permanently injured players.” Is that the part that ticked off Dakich? He posted that “it would be great” if all the NCAA players who put the “APU” acronym on display “lost their scholarships!” We wonder if Dakich should have his head examined because his thinking seems impaired.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN

Fans of armed vigilantes made George Zimmerman their national hero for shooting unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to death in Florida because Zim had thought the black kid in the hoodie looked suspicious. We’ll never know for sure if Zim was telling the truth about the incident because the only one who could corroborate it was shot in the back. Zim’s defense was that he was “standing his ground,” as the wrong-headed Florida law allowed him to do. But we do know that Zimmerman was acquitted on second-degree murder and other charges, and that his wife Shellie stood by her man during the lengthy trial. Now another side is coming out. Shellie recently filed for divorce, claiming that he threatened her father in law and forced her to lie about the couple’s finances. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor perjury charge for lying during a bail hearing following her husband’s arrest, the Associated Press reported. She got sentenced to do 100 hours of community service and a year’s probation. What did Zimmerman get? The 29-year-old “neighborhood watcher” has been busted twice since his acquittal for speeding. The least authorities could do is take away his gun. But, honestly, Zimmerman should be canned for good.
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